Now Bring Your Joy To This Wedding
Couples In Premarital Preparation
Norma Schweitzer Wood and Lisa M. Leber

One of the important, if often overlooked, tasks of the parish pastor is effective premarital counseling. Since many couples are overwhelmed by the arrangements for their wedding, it can often be difficult to lead them into a realistic and faithful dialogue that prepares them for the long-term implications of the marriage covenant. Developed by an experienced pastoral counselor/marriage therapist along with a parish pastor, Now Bring Your Joy To This Wedding is an excellent premarital resource with a practical, accessible approach to preparing couples for the joys and challenges of marriage. Its field-tested material is structured around four key areas of married life: intimacy, power, security, and freedom/responsibility. The text is addressed to couples in a friendly, conversational tone, and questions, exercises, cartoons, and guidelines stimulate active participation. Each chapter has prayer exercises that reveal God's grace-filled ways. Two workbooks (one each for the bride and groom) for writing down and sharing responses are also included. Whether the setting is a weekend retreat for a number of couples, individual counseling sessions with a pastor, or even use by a couple themselves, Now Bring Your Joy To This Wedding is sure to help couples grow in all phases of their relationship.

Wood and Leber combine experienced counseling and pastoral skills in a volume that explores marriage through the lens of baptismal vocation, family history and formation, and cultural context. The examples and discussion are posed in language that is readily accessible to the average congregational couple. For those who plan worship at weddings and prepare homilies, the book's focus on the four areas of marital preparation provides rich resources.
Susan K. Hedahl
Associate Professor of Homiletics
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg
Author of The Wedding Sermon

Norma Schweitzer Wood is the Dean of the Seminary and Associate Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Interpersonal Ministries at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Prior to her appointment as Dean, she served as the Seminary's Director of Counseling Services. Wood is a licensed psychologist and for a quarter-century was a clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

As the Corporate Compliance Officer for Diakon Lutheran Social Ministries, an ELCA social ministry program, Lisa M. Leber currently oversees legal and regulatory compliance for Diakon's ministries across its three-state territory. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College (B.A.), Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William & Mary, and Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. She previously served as the associate pastor of St. James Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where these resources were developed.